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Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The Great Hunt

I've heard, "There's a place for everything, and everything in its place." That may be the case, but most often than not the DH and I don't seem to know exactly where the place is. That's when The Great Hunt begins.

At that point one or both of us decide we absolutely must find a particular object, or we'll never have a moment's peace.Today, the hunt is on for a phone charger, which mysteriously has disappeared.

Fortunately, we both bought the same model car charger for each of our cell phones, and we can use the one that's left. Still, it's particularly irksome to get the number of chargers reduced to one, when we originally purchased two. I'm hoping to find the missing charger, but if not, we'll cope with sharing one. Neither of us wishes to spend extra money if it's not necessary to do so.

The concept of The Great Hunt can be applied in many ways to writing and publishing. Here are some examples:

Just the right idea - Is a concept sustainable for an entire book? Sometimes an idea sounds exciting, but it fizzles after a brief writing stretch. Is it the idea, or is it because not enough effort is put into making the concept work? Sometimes, a variation of the original idea could be the answer.

Just the right word - Often, a word can be on the tip of my tongue, yet it eludes me. When that happens, I may insert a question mark on my manuscript and come back to it later. Or, I may do a hunt then and there. It's easy enough to click the Thesaurus on the Word program and see if the perfect word might show up. Sometimes it does, sometimes not. If Thesaurus fails, I've often used a Google search with success.

Just the right book cover - Traditionally published authors may or may not get input on their covers, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on individual tastes. Being an indie, the choice is mine. That's also a good or bad thing. It's good that I can decide which cover I want, but bad because deciding requires choices that are not often easy to make. Whether I use a cover art designer, which I've done at times, or whether I design my own cover through Amazon's Cover Creator, I still need to find and give the go ahead to just the right combination of font, photo(s) and arrangement to catch a reader's attention, and hope readers like the choice. Not an easy feat.

Just the right places and right amount of time to promote - It's mind boggling how many social media sites are available these days for promotion. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are very popular, but LibraryThing appears to also have some good points. Are personal accounts on these sites better than business ones? These days it's hard to say. Which groups are the best to join? Are most of them comprised of authors all trying to sell their books? Where are the readers, or are most of them authors? Where can I find the time to write another book, if I'm doing a lot of promotion?

The above are a smattering of the daunting hunts writers face. Can you think of others? Or, perhaps you'd like to comment on one I've mentioned.

The hunt for the right word is an ongoing trek for me - it's amazing how many italicized or 'xxx' words (which is how I label 'wrong' or 'need to find out what the proper word is' words) I find when I bring out those first drafts!

Finding the right word is a biggie for me. I can give the definition and yet forget the word. And your comments about Your last comment about places and time really caught my attention. I hear other people talk about how much they do and it boggles my mind. How do they find the time? Excellent post, Morgan!Marja McGraw